The adventures of a first time Mummy and my son Jack.

Release the stress this Christmas with fun at the fair.

With all the trouble and strife happening in our lives at the moment, festivities haven’t really been thought about.

Daddy works four days a week and stays at his parents house to save on petrol, so our time together as a family is precious. So when we saw that the local Christmas fair was in town on one of Daddy’s days off, we jumped at the chance to let away worries float away for some good old fashioned family fun.

We told Jack we were going to see Santa and all the way into town he sat in the back of the car chanting “Santa, Santa!”.

That was of course until we had parked up, queued for 20 minutes and paid our donation to the Rutland fire service, then came the tears and “Mummy don’t leave me” (even though we all went to see Santa together). Still I guess this years picture with Santa is an improvement on last years.

Grumpy Christmas photo 2013.

After his terrifying experience with Saint Nick, the very next thing Jack saw lifted his mood straight away, a merry go round with a big shiny red car. Jack has never been able to go on any rides as he has always been to small for the ones at Grantham’s fun fair, but this time he was a perfect fit.

Naturally he chose the shiny red sports car over the bus, taxi’s and strangely ducks (a man of taste in my book) and with Mummy crouched beside him off we went, brum brum!!
Now from my point of view it was a pretty boring 5 minutes of going round and round and trying to look excited as we raced past Daddy for the 17th time, but for little Jack it was heaven. He whooped and zoomed and beeped the horn, and the smile on his face was a picture.

As you can imagine he took a little coaxing to climb off and explore the rest of the fair but soon he realised it wasn’t the only ride there.

Soon J was zooming down the helter skelter, once with Mummy and then with Daddy, scanning all the goodies on the stalls and enjoying freshly baked cakes with gingerbread latte.

A little further up was a shooting game, you know the sort ‘knock all the targets down to win a prize’. Usually we walk straight past but Jack spotted the Spider man stuffed toy they had and that was that.

“Daddy, Daddy, Spider man!!”

Spider man cost 10 tickets so that meant Daddy had to have 2 goes and hit every single target, the challenge was on.
With Jack and I cheering him on Daddy hit the first 5 targets without a single miss, on his second turn a crowd was starting to form with Jack reminding them all,

“That’s my Daddy!”

5 more targets down and one happy boy clutching his brand new Spider man stuffy, Daddy was most certainly the hero of the day.

Next we rode the Disney express and Spider man and Brewer were treated to their own seats while we chugged round and round. We were lucky enough to sit right at the front, so Jack was able to ‘drive’.

By now all this excitement and new experiences had left us all a little hungry and J quite tired, so off we went in search of some food. Jack and I shared a hot dog and Daddy had a massive burger, they had reindeer burgers but it just didn’t feel right eating Rudolf in front of now very festive toddler.

At every 10 minute interval we would pass stands selling light up swords and light sabres but one set up next to the burger stand caught Jacks eye, a stand selling a light up Mickey mouse, fibre optic, noise making object that cost 5 whole pounds! Naturally she sold it the moment she handed it to him when she noticed him staring, clever move lady.

With our pockets feeling considerably lighter and a very tired boy we set off back to the car, with a small break to dance with a giant Brewer we found.

As we trudged back past Santa, we noticed that he had now been joined by some real life reindeer, which captivated J. Having just given Jack a few lessons in Christmas 101 (Who is Santa, what does he do and who are his reindeer), he looked the reindeer straight in the eye and said “Hello Blitzen!”
Cue many awww’s and adoring looks from the crowd surrounding the reindeer.

Back home we had to peel a sleeping toddler out of his car seat and straight into his pyjamas and up to bed, not forgetting spider man of course.

I suppose this post is just a small reminder that no matter how stressful life may be, try to make some family time, believe me its worth it.

A busy day for a young Jack! I love the expression with Santa, is really is quite an ask to put a little one with a strange man in a red suit! I bet next year he will turn the corner and be really keen. the roundabout and the reindeer make it all look like a great adventure. Thank you for sharing with me on Country Kids